I‘m thrilled to see you taking initiative to master Microsoft Teams! As remote and hybrid work cement Teams as a staple collaboration platform across organizations, unlocking the capabilities through its icons transforms efficiency and productivity.
But if you feel perplexed trying to interpret the array of symbols crowding the Teams interface, you‘re not alone. Without understanding what lives behind each icon, tapping into its extensive features feels overwhelming.
Not to worry! I‘ve compiled this illustrated reference as your decoder ring for the most essential Microsoft Teams icons. With helpful screenshots and use case examples, you‘ll quickly interpret icons meaning to navigate Teams like a pro!
Microsoft Teams 101
Before diving into the icons, let‘s briefly explore why Microsoft Teams exists.
As working from home becomes standard, Teams powers productive collaboration in our disparate, distributed workspaces as if we‘re gathered around the same conference table.
Core capabilities include:
✔️ Messaging via chat and channels
✔️ Video meetings and conference calls
✔️ Scheduling calendars and to-do task management
✔️ File sharing and co-editing capabilities
✔️ Third-party integrations like Trello boards
With workers spread worldwide, Microsoft Teams connects people and ideas by merging conversations and content together in one platform.
Understanding the icons provides entrées to all of Teams’ offerings so you can communicate, coordinate, and collaborate seamlessly from any location.
Now, let’s explore the icons anchoring these capabilities!
Key Icons Explained
While additional icons appear based on your view within Teams, these 12 icons consistently anchor core sections across the platform.
| Icon | Section | Description |
|---|---|---|
| :bell: | Activity | Displays notifications, mentions, reactions to your messages |
| :speech_balloon: | Chat | Direct and group messaging threads |
| :people_holding_hands: | Teams / Community | Browse available Teams and Communities to join |
| :calendar: | Calendar | Scheduling interface linked to Outlook calendar |
| :#️⃣ | Join with code | Input meeting code to enter without invite |
| :video_camera: | Meet Now | Instant video meeting with no pre-scheduling |
| ➕ | New Meeting | Schedule a future meetings with attendees |
| :pen_nib: | Formatting | Style text with bolding, lists, etc |
| :paperclip: | Attachments | Add files from your device |
| :smiley_face: | Emoji | Insert emojis inline with text |
| :collision: | Giphy | Search for reaction GIFs |
| :bar_chart: | Polls | Create surveys for responses |
Now let‘s explore what each icon does and when to use them!
Activity
The Activity icon, portrayed as a bell, sits right at the top of the Teams left rail to provide instant access to your notifications.
These include:
✔️ Mentions from teammates across channels and chats
✔️ Reactions on your messages and posts
✔️ Any assignments or action items directed your way
✔️ Approval requests on shared files
✔️ Chat invitations from colleagues
The bell icon provides a central feed to never miss important updates from collaborators. Visiting notifications as they occur lets you stay up-to-speed on emerging needs and address questions or blockers early.
For example, say a designer @mentions you requesting feedback on a draft brochure they‘ve uploaded. When you click the bell icon, Teams surfaces this notification so you quickly review the file and respond.
Keeping on top of notifications prevents work from slipping through cracks so projects progress smoothly.
Chat
The Chat icon visually resembles a comic-book style dialogue bubble, inviting casual conversation. Click here to access your direct message and group chat threads for ongoing discussions.
Common examples include:
- Direct 1:1 chats to align quickly with a colleague or ask a fast question
- Team chats to loop in a subset of people on a shared deliverable
- Leadership chats for connecting managers across departments
- "War rooms" to escalate time-sensitive issues
Chats allow conversations to flow naturally while keeping messages separate from more structured channels. You can instantly react, share files, or video call chat partners for efficient alignment.
Say your team lacks clarity on goals for an upcoming project. Rather than bombard the crowded Announcements channel, you could @mention key players in a new Group Chat to talk through plans privately.
Teams / Community
This icon was originally labeled "Teams" but recently updated to "Community" – but either way, clicking it lets you browse available Teams and Communities to join across your company.
Example types of teams include:
- Departmental Teams like Marketing, Sales, HR
- Regional Teams such as Americas, EMEA, APAC
- Project Teams around initiatives like a product launch
- Communities of Practice by job function like designers, engineers
Joining relevant Teams provides access to designated channels for each one compartmentalizing conversations by topic. This prevents information overload in crowded channels.
For instance, as a sales rep you could join the Sales Team and Americas Team to monitor region-specific conversations without sorting through irrelevant chatter from other departments.
Calendar
The Teams Calendar integrates directly with the Outlook scheduling system you likely already use to view and manage meetings. Syncing both platforms allows you to seamlessly schedule Teams video meetings as part of your workflow.
Handy for:
- Scheduling 1:1calls
- Coordinating brainstorm sessions
- Setting up recurring check-ins
- Inviting guests external to your org
- Integrating with room calendars
With Calendar integration, Teams eliminates the friction of toggling between apps to organize schedules and meetings. Click-to-join access makes joining virtual conferences simple.
For example, your upcoming 1:1 with a cross-functional partner auto-syncs from Outlook to Teams. When it‘s time, just click the meeting link right within Teams to launch your video call instantly without the hassle of lookups.
Join Meeting
This icon represented by a generic "#" hash symbol provides a shortcut to input access codes for unscheduled meetings you‘ve been invited to ad-hoc.
Meeting organizers generate these codes to share for participants to quickly enter a meeting without formal calendar invites or existing access.
For example, during an emerging crisis, leadership could spur-of-the-moment initiate an "Incident Response" meeting and immediately gather insights from key players using the access code instead of formal invitations through calendars.
Meet Now
At times, unplanned video calls prove necessary to accelerate decisions without Calendar scheduling delay. The Meet Now icon activates instant meeting access.
With one click, you or other participants can join the video call and begin collaborating through screen sharing, video, and voice within seconds.
Common examples include:
✔️ Huddling to polish a proposal before a deadline
✔️ Troubleshooting workflow processes
✔️ Interviewing a candidate outside calendar slots
Meet Now provides flexibility to convene virtual meetings on-demand when urgent issues emerge outside planned gathering.
Schedule Meeting
While Meet Now handles real-time meeting needs, the Schedule Meeting icon allows planning sessions for the future by reserving times and sending invites to attendees.
Use cases include:
✔️ Weekly standups or retrospectives
✔️ Ongoing status calls between business units
✔️ Cross-functional brainstorms and working sessions
By scheduling ahead, all participants block off the times and receive calendar invites with easy click-to-join access at the meeting start time.
For example, organizing a monthly all-hands meeting requires coordinating across multiple teams. Using Schedule Meeting ensures you lock-in an ideal time through Outlook calendar integration so everyone receives the invite automatically.
Text Formatting
When actively posting updates and conversing within a Team channel or chat, the text formatting icon opens helpful styling tools.
Formatting options include:
✔️ Bolding or italicizing
✔️ Headings, numbered/bulleted lists
✔️ Hyperlinks, quotes, inline code
✔️ Text highlights
Rich formatting takes your messages beyond plain text to call out important points, provide structure through headings and lists, and direct readers elsewhere through links.
For instance, when announcing a new process in an Announcements channel, formatting certain guidelines as bold or italicized calls attention to critical next steps.
Attach Files
Collaboration requires sharing documents and files constantly. The paperclip attachment icon allows you to browse and upload files directly into a chat or Team channel conversation.
Shared files show within the messages feed as live previews so teammates can review documents without leaving Teams. This provides broader visibility to distribute files organization-wide.
Common examples include:
- Sharing meeting notes or presentations
- Distributing proposals and planning docs
- Gathering feedback on draft collateral
Rather than working through email attachments, centralizing file sharing into Teams channels and chats cuts down on inbox clutter while retaining context and conversations around assets in one place.
Emoji
Emojis serve as emotional shorthand within messages to quickly react or emphasize a point that text alone may not convey. Find these popular characters by clicking the smiley face.
Peppering emojis throughout your posts humanizes conversations and expresses sentiments seamlessly inline.
For example:
- 🎉 Celebrating wins
- ⏱ Indicating urgency
- 👍 Highlighting approval
- 😟 Conveying concerns
Emojis help capture tone, state of mind, and reactions efficiently without typing out long-form emotional responses. But use them judiciously lest your messages skew too informal among serious business discussions. A balance prevents miscommunication.
Giphy
Similar to emoji but ratcheted up ten notches, integrating Giphy allows you to search and share animated GIFs within conversations – either for emotional emphasis or pure entertainment value with hilarious pop culture references.
GIFs prove handy for:
- Making light of stressful situations
- Adding humor and levity
- Celebrating milestones playfully
- Reacting to good/bad news
When used maturely and avoiding NSFW content, GIFs foster social cohesion helping teams suffering burnout crack smiles during the workday. But take care not to overuse them – restraint prevents veering into unnecessary distraction within important conversations.
Polls
The final messaging icon, depicted as three vertical bars, provides a built-in polling feature to survey Teams members and gather feedback.
Polls work well for:
✔️ Decision-making to build consensus
✔️ Gathering input on preferences
✔️ Testing ideas with end users
Polls centralize survey responses and discussions around the results rather than emailing fragmented data or links out to external survey tools.
For example, when deciding between logo design concepts, create a quick poll to have stakeholders cast votes for their favored option right within the conversation feed.
The winner surfaces automatically based on the votes so decisions wrap up quickly informed by people‘s voices.
Presence Indicators
While not found within the icon library, presence indicators provide helpful cues worth covering.
Notice the dots next to a member‘s profile image within any chat or channel conversation:
🟢 Green means they‘re actively online/available
🟡Yellow indicates possibly idle or temporarily away
🔴Red signals busy – likely in a meeting or heads-down without ability to chat
At a quick glance, this allows you to gauge optimal windows for conversing live through video or chat versus scheduling conversations for later.
This prevents wasting time trying to engage teammates when they‘re clearly tied up or unavailable based on status indicators.
Key Takeaways
With an illustrated overview of the 12 most essential Microsoft Teams icons explained, you‘re now ready to take advantage of these popular features!
Keep an eye on your notifications bell to stay updated on important messages that need your attention.
Move conversations to Chat when they require nuanced, ongoing discussion between a subset of people.
Join relevant Teams and Communities to compartmentalize topics and conversations by interest areas.
Integrate Calendar with Teams for streamlined meeting coordination.
And when communicating within channels and chats, format your messages, share files, add emojis and GIFs, and use polls to enrich conversations.
You got this! Here‘s to Teams superstardom. Now you can finally understand what all those icons do!
